Politics of Presidential Unilateral Action

This paper discusses President Obama’s executive order 13616 on Accelerating Broadband Infrastructure Deployment, a proactive policy set to consolidate fragmented regulations towards broadband fiber optics installation in Federal Rights of Way (ROW) by carriers.

The Executive Order for Accelerating Broadband Infrastructure Deployment

On June 14, 2012, President Obama issued an executive order to accelerate broadband infrastructure deployment. Specifically, the executive order formalized the setup of a working group comprising various government agencies, such as the Departments of Agriculture, Commerce, Defense, Interior, Transportation, and Veterans Affairs, and the US Postal Service to establish federal broadband procedures and requirements, and a uniform process for contracts and permits on federal lands for broadband carriers to lease Federal assets for broadband deployment. The working group is also tasked to enable the deployment of conduit for broadband facilities during highway construction, as part of the “dig once” initiative to reduce the frequency and costs for digging the highway. The executive order also calls for federal assets and leasing requirements to be posted on agency websites, and enable public tracking of broadband deployment projects through the Federal Infrastructure Projects Dashboard.

Rationale for the Executive Order

President Obama’s administration recognized the important of broadband accessibility. They see broadband access as an essential tool to improve the global competitiveness of United States. However, a proportion of the population lack adequate access to broadband, either due to unavailability of such services, or current installations were unable to keep up with growing traffic volumes due to increased use of mobile devices. Expanding access and upgrading services would require new infrastructure deployment.

The federal government owns approximately 30% of US lands and owns or leases approximately 10,000 buildings nationwide, many of these provide excellent pathways for broadband infrastructure. However, broadband carriers seem to face significant challenges when working to secure access to federal ROW or buildings to deploy broadband infrastructure. The structure and language of the executive order suggested that the current federal system is overly fragmented with many different agencies, each with its own set of rules. There seems to be very little inter-agency coordination, and possibly contradicting rules that inhibits broadband deployment.

Proactive Policy Making

President Obama and his administration realized that to boost broadband deployment, there is a need to reduce the barriers for companies to install broadband infrastructure on Federal properties and roads. There was a serious need to streamline and harmonize federal regulations and standardize controls, thus making the government more efficient. This would bring about benefits such as cost-savings for private industry and broadband users. However, there is no one single lead agency that takes charge of leasing Federal ROW. It was unlikely that Congress would table this as a governmental agenda, with looming income inequality amidst a stagnating economy.

As the nation’s leader, President Obama had to give a push to various federal agencies to come together to recognize and rectify the issue. By issuing the executive order, President Obama forced the various federal agencies to do just that, through improving government efficiency and providing information on public infrastructure projects to the public. The goal to improve government efficiency also mirrored executive order 13563 on Improving Regulation and Regulatory Review. The provision of information would help carriers time their deployment to periods when streets are already under construction, minimizing the number of re-digging works, and hence the overall construction time, costs and inconvenience.

Since the issuance of the executive order, a GIS mapping tool and inventory of broadband resources were created to assist carriers in broadband deployment. The Federal Highway Administration also published a report on successful broadband deployment in highway ROW.

(598 words)

                                                  

Redefining use of marijuana & its impact on public policy

In this post I will be discussing how the use of marijuana changes from a valence issue to a non-valance issue. 

Do Marijuana Use Lead to Social Problems?

Marijuana is a Schedule I drug under the Controlled Substance Act (1970), one that the federal law recognizes as having high potential for abuse with no medical use, and is not safe to use with supervision by medical practitioner. Before this classification, marijuana has long been subjected to strict restriction in its cultivation and distribution from the early 1900s. The image of marijuana use was most drastically criticized since the 1930s, when Harry Anslinger headed the then Federal Bureau of Narcotics. He sought to get rid of all drugs and spread claims in his anti-narcotics propaganda on the harmful effects of drug abuse on society, ranging from violent crimes and sexual offences. Such an image had been ingrained in society that the use and abuse of marijuana is bad, and the government is responsible in resolving this valence issue. 

Whilst the public generally accepts the fact that marijuana abuse is wrong, it is not the same with marijuana usage. Baumgartner & Jones had discussed on the inadequacy of statistics and reliable data. There has not been reliable data indicating that marijuana usage would lead to abuse, that all users are abusers. Nor are there data that directly link controlled marijuana usage to social problems. Most data on crime rates are at best proxies to relate to drug abuse, but not drug use. The lack of explicit and conclusive evidence that marijuana use contributes to social problems makes it harder to define it as a social problem itself.

Separately, research on the medicinal value of marijuana had demonstrated its potential to help various groups of patients such as epileptic children. The need to protect the young and vulnerable had stirred a public response that warms up towards more medical research on marijuana. Marijuana is no longer seen as a social problem, but a medical solution. However, the federal law prohibits medicinal applications of marijuana as well, leading to greater tension, none so far as the legalization of medicinal marijuana use in 20 states, with more states looking to relax rules pertaining to some medicinal use of marijuana as well. This showed that the public no longer see marijuana use as a valence issue that requires governmental intervention.

Federal Dilemma in Relaxing Rule on Marijuana Use

Legalizing medical and recreational marijuana usage by the states, despite knowing that federal law is against it, is a way for electorates to send a message to the Obama administration to relax the laws on marijuana. Yet, President Obama and his administration did nothing to change the federal law. Perhaps, it is a legacy issue from past presidents and the DEA that proves to be too difficult to overturn for political reasons. It could also be that the absence of reliable data that marijuana use would not lead to abuse forces Congress to be cautious in any relaxation, to keep to the known-knowns.

The bottom line is: there is no real incentive for the federal government to open the Pandora’s Box to legalize marijuana, only to have the law reinstated in the future, or being forced to legalize other drugs. Such actions could show incompetence of the current administration which would be politically bad to the administration. Thus, it is not surprising that President Obama chose inaction, and even granted selective medical research. This proves that the federal government has recognized that marijuana use is no longer a social issue, but a political one.

(596 words)

The Politics of Fracking (aka Hydraulic Fracture)

Modern living depends greatly on the availability and accessibility of energy. Energy provides the comfort and convenience to sustain our quality of life. More importantly, energy drives the economy to create wealth for people and nations. As such, countries are obsessed with seeking cheap and easily available sources of energy. Albeit a looming climate issue, energy consumption increases as population increases, and the lack of cost-effective and consistent renewable energy source means that mankind would still be burning fossil fuel to generate electricity, often at the expense of the environment. This is true in any country, including the United States.

As crude oil prices increase to new heights since the mid-2000s, coupled with ever improving oil-drilling technology, previous uneconomical solutions becomes economical. One such technology is hydraulic fracture of shale rocks, or fracking. Technology improvements and high oil prices propelled it as a new cost-effective solution for natural gas mining in previously unrecoverable shale rocks. With increasing oil prices, a Downian mobilization began to support the fracking activities resulting in increase in domestic natural gas supplies.

Fracking to produce shale gas enters into an “iron triangle” of sorts, not unseen in previous energy crunch times where congress had to relook at options to secure energy supply. Despite the unknowns in terms of environmental impacts from fracking, the Energy policy was amended in 2005, including favoring fracking activities. This includes the exemption for fracking under several federal laws, such as the Clean Air Act, Clean Water Act, Safe Drinking Water Act, National Environmental Policy Act, Resource Conservation and Recovery Act, Emergency Planning and Community Right-to-Know Act, and the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act. In addition, there was little congress oversight in licensing and controlling the rate and extent of fracking, as observed by Brady. Much of the regulation was delegated to individual states. This resulted in a rather fragmented regulation that differs from state to state. Whilst New Jersey had banned fracking altogether, many states allow fracking in areas which do not affect drinking water supplies.

The increasing fracking activities to increase US domestic oil and gas production is changing the country’s landscape. “Cities” are popping up in the middle of nowhere, with settlements established for the sole purpose of cracking shale rocks to produce oil and natural gas. With increasing operations, there is also increasing publicity. A great public concern was the unknown effect of fracking to the quality of underground water sources. The key issue resides with the cocktail mix of water, sand and chemicals used to fracture the shale rocks. Many of the chemicals used were harmful or carcinogenic, yet they are often considered “trade-secrets” amongst the oil and gas producers. It is unsure if fracking operations could pollute underground waters that end up in the water mains, or flow to the rivers after treatment. Environmentalists were also hailing that fracking resulted in release of methane gas, which is more harmful that carbon dioxide towards global warming.

With greater public scrutiny, and greater uncertainty, the image switches from enthusiasm to criticism. This is shown in public opinion polls, from over 50% public acceptance in 2012 to under 50% public acceptance in 2013, report by Pew. From such swinging support, we are seeing the tipping of the scale, as fracking began the transition from Downian to Schattschneider mobilization, and a Conflictual policy network forming. The Environment Protection Agency has been called upon to do their job, monitoring water safety and air pollution. 

Minimum Wage Agenda Emergence

The issue on minimum wage has been a hot topic in the Obama’s administration, raised during both the 2013 and 2014 State of the Union addresses. The proposal to raise minimum wage from the current hourly rate of $7.25 to $9 (in 2013) and $10.10 (in 2014) presented an urgency to mitigating the ever widening income inequality within the United States.

A problem stream as defined by Kingdon, the issue on income inequality has been widely debated from time to time. Whilst other measures such as tax credits and relief were introduced, they did not effectively reduce the widening income gap. As reported by the Economist, the United States has the highest GINI coefficient compared to all other highly developed countries. The inequality was worse in certain states, many of which were Democrats-held districts, as reported by the Atlantic. The situation is a stark difference from the promises made by President Obama during his campaign where he wanted to uplift the middle-income, when many workers earning the current minimum wage were living below the poverty line. Many Americans recognized that income inequality is a problem, somewhat of a National Mood as described by Kingdon, and are in support of raising the minimum wage.

Conversely, the income inequality issue could potentially be detrimental to the political standing of the Democrats, as they might be seen by the constituents to be ineffective in delivering their promises. This provided a political will amongst Democratic leaders to pursue a solution to the problem stream.

When President Obama discussed the issue on raising minimum wage as a policy solution in his 2013 State of the Union address, he effectively placed the issue on the governmental agenda. This prompted debates between the two parties on the pros and cons of this upward revision. Whilst the situation remains dire, the two parties seemed to remain locked in horns. With the 2014 House of Representative elections looming, there is a coupling of the problem stream with the political stream that is pressing President Obama and the Democrats to act on this. The issue was deemed urgent enough that President Obama had raised the minimum wage for federal contract workers amidst the legislator inactivity, as reported by Digital Journal.

Following President Obama’s 2014 State of the Union address reiterating the need to raise minimum wages, political entrepreneurs such as Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and Senator Tom Harkin of Iowa, had taken to task to draft the minimum wage bill and upgrade it to the Decision agenda. The 2014 address, together with the coupling of the problem and political streams, presented a policy window to quickly table the bill, despite reports that the Democrat leaders had yet to receive sufficient support from the Republicans to pass the bill. Despite so, the Politico reported that the Senate is expected to vote on Harkin’s bill as early as this week.

Whilst it is still uncertain if the bill would pass the Senate, the debate on minimum wage revision presented a policy alternative to mitigate the income inequality issue. Equally uncertain was whether the bill would remain on the governmental and decision agenda after the 2014 House of Representative elections. From my research, I recognized that there are many policy alternatives, levers and platforms (including state-level minimum wage reviews) which legislators could and had used. Raising minimum wage is but only one solution to tackling the issue on income inequality, albeit a direct one that could instil a “feel good” to employees, even when it is uncertain of the actual net pay increase or effectiveness in overcoming income inequality.

(597 words)